The funeral of Russian opponent Alexei Navalny, who died in a penal colony in the Far North on February 16, will take place in Moscow on Friday afternoon, his wife and team announced on Wednesday.
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“The funeral service for Alexei will be held on March 1 at 2:00 p.m. (11:00 GMT) at the Church of the Icon of Our Lady “Relieve My Suffering” in Marino. The funeral will take place at the Borisovsky Cemetery in the southeast of the Russian capital, his team said in Telegram.
The religious ceremony should therefore be organized according to the Orthodox rite under the black domes decorated with gold crosses of this small church, located less than twenty kilometers from the red walls of the Kremlin.
According to a close aide to Alexei Navalny, Ivan Zhdanov, the funeral will then take place at 4:00 p.m. local time (1:00 p.m. GMT) in the nearby cemetery.
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Yulia Navalnaïa, the opponent's widow, regretted that there was no civil ceremony to publicly expose the body – as is often the case after the death of great figures in Russia.
“Two people are responsible for this: Vladimir Putin and Sergei Sobyanin,” wrote Moscow Mayor Yulia Navalnaïa on X (formerly Twitter).
“The people in the Kremlin killed him, then trampled on his body, then his mother, and now his memory. “We don’t want special treatment, we just want to give people the opportunity to say goodbye to Alexei normally,” she continued.
Earlier in the day, in a speech to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, she said she feared arrests at the funeral.
These funerals could mobilize large numbers of supporters of Vladimir Putin's former number one adversary and become an embarrassment for the Russian president, who is preparing for another coronation after the unopposed election scheduled for March 15-17.
The police operation around the church and the cemetery is therefore likely to be particularly important.
Since the handover of Alexei Navalny's body to his mother last Saturday, the opposing team has been looking for a place for a “public farewell”, but has been “rejected” with every request, and the authorities have put pressure on those responsible for the proposed locations .
“Everywhere they refused to give us anything. In some places we were told that it was forbidden,” Mr. Zhdanov said in Telegram, criticizing the stance of the “Kremlin and (Sergueï) Sobyanin,” a close friend of Vladimir Putin.
Silence from Putin
In the 2010s, before the repressive machinery completely collapsed on him, Alexei Navalny managed to mobilize crowds, especially in the Russian capital, and thus secure his status as the Kremlin's number one opponent.
In 2013, he received almost 30% of the vote against Sergei Sobyanin in the Moscow local elections.
This was followed in particular by intimidation, short prison sentences, and then a poisoning in 2020, for which he blamed Vladimir Putin, despite denials from the Russian head of state.
Alexei Navalny returned to Russia in early 2021 after recovering and was immediately arrested on the orders of the authorities. At the time of his death, he was serving a 19-year prison sentence for “extremism” in an Arctic colony.
Meanwhile, the attack on Ukraine that began two years ago had accelerated the repression of every voice critical of the Kremlin.
For his part, Vladimir Putin, who will deliver his annual address to the nation on Thursday, has still not responded to the death of his main critic.
The circumstances surrounding Alexei Navalny's death, which shocked the world, are still unclear.
According to the Russian Penitentiary Service, he died as a result of a sudden malaise “after a walk.”
Alexei Navalny's team and many Western leaders have accused Vladimir Putin of the “murder” of the opponent, who was imprisoned for three years in very harsh conditions.